Hell Banning
SAI recently posted an article entitled “Tumblr Breeds Its Own Species Of Griefer: The Anonyblogger”, which talks about tumblr sites whose only purpose is to reblog an individual, while adding snarky comments (rebloggingjulia, for instance)
David actually spoke about this on Friday, when he presented a concept called “Hell Banning”. It’s an idea that I was unfamiliar with, but makes a lot of sense. Here’s how it works:
When a griefer is identified, the immediate impulse is to shut down his account. But that never works, as they can create another account, sign in from another IP address, etc. However, what if the person doesn’t know that they’ve been shut down? They keep posting, but people seem to stop paying attention, and after awhile, without any encouragement, it gets boring and they go away. With a Hell Ban, a bit is flipped on an account, which effectively puts it into silenced mode. To the user, nothing has changed; they see their posts on their blog and in the dashboard. And people who are following them continue to see it all too. But to the rest of the world, they’re invisible. The troll and his friends have their little world of fun, and the rest of us have a grief-free dashboard.
Brilliant!
